Tasty Life: Leopard Teeth, Calf Bones Found in Ruins Near Pyramids

Below:

Next story in Science

TORONTO — The remains of a mansion that likely held high-ranking
officials some 4,500 years ago have been discovered near Egypt's
Giza Pyramids. Bones from young cattle and teeth from leopards
suggest its residents ate and dressed like royalty.

Archaeologists excavating a city just 400 meters (1,312 feet)
south of the Sphinx
uncovered the house and nearby mound containing the hind limbs of
young cattle, the seals of high-ranking officials, which were
inscribed with titles like "the scribe of the royal box" and "the
scribe of the royal school," and leopard teeth (but no leopard).

"The other thing that is just amazing is almost all the cattle
are under 10 months of age … they are eating veal," said Richard
Redding, the chief research officer of Ancient Egypt Research
Associates, at a recent symposium held here by the Society for
the Study of Egyptian Antiquities.

From his sample of 100,000 bones from the nearby mound, Redding
said he couldn't find a cow bone that was older than 18 months
and found few examples of sheep and goat bones.

"We have very, very, high status individuals," said Redding, also
a research scientist at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the
University of Michigan.

Besides cattle bones the archaeologists found two leopard teeth
in the house and another two in the nearby mound. They, however,
found no leopard bones, leaving them with a puzzle.

Redding consulted ancient drawings that date to the
Old Kingdom (the age when
pyramid building was at its height), between 2649 and 2150
B.C. He found that some high-ranking individuals, including
members of the royal family, wore leopard skin that still had the
head attached. This would explain why they found teeth — which
could've fallen out of the head while the wearer was passing by —
but no leopard bones.

High-ranking clergy known as "sem" priests were allowed to wear
these leopard skins, and they could be members of the royal
house, noted Mark Lehner, the director of Ancient Egypt Research
Associates, in an email to LiveScience.

Redding was also puzzled that many cattle hind bones, yet few
forelimbs, were found. For some reason the people of the house
avoided eating the forelimbs of the cattle. Again Redding turned
to ancient drawings. There, he found numerous examples of scenes
where people presented forelimbs as offerings to deities, but
almost no examples of hind limbs being offered. As such, the
people of this house were likely eating the remains of offerings.

Clues to a priestly complex

This discovery may help the archaeologists identify offering
places and dwellings of ancient priests. Since the elite house is
full of hind limbs (the remains of offerings), Redding suspects
that bone deposits that contain mainly forelimbs would be located
in places where the offerings were being made. [ Photos:
The Lost City of the Pyramid Builders ]

In 2011 Redding and his colleagues discovered what might be just
such a place. Archaeologists call it the "silo building complex,"
and it is located near a monument dedicated to Queen Khentkawes,
possibly a daughter of the pharaoh Menkaure.

"My analysis of the bones from the small excavations at (the
building complex) in 2012, showed a strong bias towards forelimb
elements — as to be expected in priestly garbage," Redding wrote
in an email to LiveScience. "We will get larger samples this
February, but right now my operating hypothesis is that the
(complex) was occupied by
royal cult priests."

Located near a basin that may be part of a larger harbor, this
building complex "is flanked by long bakeries and contains a set
of grain silos," Lehner said in his email. It "probably
administered provisions and produced bread and other offerings."

The complex dates to a bit after the Giza Pyramids were built and
may have been constructed at the site of an earlier town where
people involved in the building of the Pyramid of Khafre (the
second largest pyramid at Giza) lived.